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How Arabs wrote numbers in the Middle Ages | Tangente
Today, we use "Arabic numerals" to refer to what the Arabs themselves called "Indian numerals." Other numeral systems predated these numerals—the ancestors of our own—and even continued to coexist with them after their introduction.
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Math for everyone
Let's grapple with division | Tangente
The four arithmetic operations that we all learn to set out so conscientiously in our school notebooks are “elementary,” aren’t they? Yet the methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division have not always been presented as they are today in Western countries!
Michel SebilleFeb 20, 2024
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Al-Khwarizmi's linguistic legacy: algebra and algorithm | Tangente
Al-Khwārizmī's works were translated into Latin and helped introduce the West to the Indian numeral system; more broadly, they contributed to the early development of algebra. Their legacy lives on in our vocabulary.
BERTRAND HAUCHECORNEFeb 11, 2025
History and Culture
Literature and mathematics: Perec joins the Pléiade
Perec in the Pléiade, Nabokov in Big Data, and mathematics in a "digest"
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